Toronto’s newest rink ready for Battle of the Blades

For years, Toronto city council and waterfront dreamers have wrung their hands about how the heck to bring rinks to Toronto’s port lands. Council voted at its last meeting of this term to spent $88-million on a dramatic, stacked four-pad rink, but that may never get built: mayoral frontrunner Rob Ford opposes the idea, and the city is short $34-million for the project anyway.

Guess what? As the debate has raged, a group has quietly and quickly built a hockey-sized rink in the port, and without a cent of new cash from City Hall.

I speak of the new rink for Battle of the Blades, which launches Sunday night at 8 p.m. on CBC. (The show was born last year at Maple Leaf Gardens, but that option is now gone as workers transform the Gardens into a Loblaws supermarket, with a rink for Ryerson University on top.)

So Insight Productions has rented the 46,000 square-foot megastage at Pinewood Studios Toronto, and in 11 days has built and flooded a 200-foot by 70-foot rink and seating for 1,730 people.

Yes, the ice is in. Sue Brophey, producer of the show, took me on a tour yesterday and our glasses fogged up in the chill.

For the studio and the waterfront, this is a welcome development. Several years ago the City of Toronto used incentives to lure a film studio to Commissioners Street in the Port of Toronto. Two years ago it opened as Filmport. A year later, the studio completed its Stage 4 — the largest purpose-built sound stage in North America.

Meanwhile the economy tanked, the Canadian dollar soared, and movie-making dried up. The original investors fled, leaving the City of Toronto to step into the breach as an investor, and recruit Pinewood Shepperton PLC of the U.K., famous for the James Bond films, to market the place. No one has yet made a film on the megastage.

Paul Bronfman, an investor who owns 20% of Pinewood Toronto and acts as chairman, has called the studio, which ballooned 25% over budget to $80-million, “my most challenging, difficult financial investment ever.” Today, with the arrival of Battle of the Blades, he is more upbeat.

“It’s great to have Battle of the Blades in there,” said Mr. Bronfman, owner of William F. White International, which supplies equipment to film crews. “It’s a marquee show. It is a bit of an unusual situation to have, but it is the right use. If it’s a hit and if they want back in, it would be a pleasure to have them.”

The show averaged 1.3-million viewers last year.

At Stage 4, workers laid a webwork of thousands of metres of thin white plastic pipe on the floor. Through the pipes runs glycol, chilling the ice that lies on top.

Around the ice rise short bleachers, surrounded by acres of black curtain rising 40-feet high, punctuated by fake 40-foot-high art-deco style windows that mimic the look of the old Gardens. A white Zamboni sits to one side.

“To rent an arena for 10 weeks, 24/7 in hockey season is impossible,” says Ms. Brophey. “I live in the east end and I would drive by all the time and say, ‘What is that crazy building with the red legs?’ This is a 60’ ceiling. It had the size, it had the height, it didn’t have columns.

“Because of the history, Maple Leaf Gardens was a great place to be. But this is made for film and television. Obviously it’s not cheap, but it’s about what studios this size cost. It’s just so honkin’ big. It’s intended to hold a town or a Harry Potter Castle.”

For his part, Mr. Bronfman is still trying to lure a movie to the megastage. Pinewood is in talks with David Cronenberg, the director, to bring in his new picture, Cosmopolis. When Filmport launched, Mr. Cronenberg gushed, “The mega-stage is my Notre Dame. It’s my cathedral. I plan to worship there regularly.”

Recalling that day, Mr. Bronfman laughed. “It’s anybody’s temple as long as it’s the right price,” he said.

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